


milk and bone

by aosc



Category: Uncharted
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:12:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena thinks that she might let her heart break over that cocky slip of teeth, even when it's in a situation where it's in barely concealed anger, or in pain, at the point of a rifle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	milk and bone

**Author's Note:**

> the otp of otp's. forever. there.

* * *

 

Elena is unused to getting salt in her mouth and to the way your hair will stiffen up when exposed to the warm sun and thick ocean froth for an extended period of time. So by the time they scour off along the shores of the island, the bun she's kept through and through unravels into a tangle at the back of her neck, and her lips chap roughly to the point of bleeding.

 

She's a little wary of how the gold chimes between the roll of Nate's fingers, where he's sat leaned against the crates, rough scrapes along the arches of his cheek bones and his shirt ripping and treading in the seams.

 

"You alright?"

 

She startles, nodding. Nate's studying her from his end, two coins in the sink of his cupped palm. His lips barely quirk. "Escudo for your thoughts?"

 

She thinks that she is grateful that they're all alive. Whole. That her right hook and quick burst temper let her in on one of the world's wonders. And that there is a dull ache in her shoulder, and the throb of a cut just beneath her left eyebrow. That she also saw the naked horrors of mankind. That she hasn't slept in three days, and will collapse when she allows herself. Her fingers barely shake, and she barely manages to make it not too obvious. She thinks that she will dream of this, and those dreams will for a long time be nightmares.

 

She wants to look Nate in the white of his eye and ask, w _hat now?_ , but she also knows as much about his character to understand that her questions will be avoided, and that his answers will trip over the edge and into an abyss of silence, should she press forward for them. She's fine with that, she thinks; they've known each other for two weeks. Through pirates, cursed Peruvian gold and hitmen, that is. But Elena barely knows a thing about Nathan Drake. 

 

"I'd kill for a full night's sleep in anything resembling a bed," Elena admits.

 

Nate chuckles. "Yeah. But these little babies right here'll get you the Four Seasons. And -- it's on the house." He gestures towards the gold and the brightness of the jewels, heaped carelessly beneath the flap of tarp they've half pulled over it. Elena thinks that she can't quite believe -- all of this. She probably never will.

 

She closes her eyes. "That's sweet, but you're still not getting out of giving me a real, flesh and bone-story."

 

"Uh huh."

 

When she opens her eyes again to the dying light and a spray of salt water down the flanks of the boat, Nate is watching her, and with something that makes shivers trip on her shoulders and run down her spine, chasing one another until she has to look away and into the horizon and breathe out.

 

* * *

 

He does get her the Four Seasons. A suite in dark paneled wood in Bogotá, with sheets thick and draping. And Nate himself.

 

Nate presses her flush against himself, shirt discarded but dirty jeans still riding low on his hips. Elena sighs into his mouth and scratches trails and marks the nape of his neck with angry red _x's_. They continue, a treasure hunt, down his back, black and yellowing purple from abuse and the wild of the island. He hisses sometimes, roughly, against Elena's neck where he's licked wet; into her ribs, where he is carefully breathing kisses into the skin and the bones. His body tensing, relaxing.

 

He is open mouthed and biting down on the inside of her thigh when she accidentally pulls on hair that is stuck in a half closed yawn of a head wound.  _Shouldn't you get that checked_ , she could say, but then he looks up at her, and he looks undone -- messy, blush across the dust of freckles on his cheeks. "Nate," she breathes, instead, and his eyelashes stutter shut.

 

_What is this_ , she could ask, because she doesn't know half of it -- but then he bows his head, blows soft air on her hip, and trails down until he is right there -- licking her open, grips her hips steady and fucks her steadily more warm and yearning with his tongue, and she holds every thought.

 

* * *

 

Elena is taught early by her mother that she does whatever she pleases, though within certain limits. If she wants to sail the seven seas and chase make belief, then she may do so. It isn't wholly approved of, but the important thing was always to give Elena the choice to. She is grateful for that. That she has the virtue of a choice not because she took it for herself; all alone, curled into the shadows of the world, but because her parents loves her enough to realize that's what is most important of all.

 

Nate doesn't have to tell her (he won't) that he does whatever he wants due to the fact that he hasn't had the choice not to.

 

The network made a background check, sloppy, but there, on him, before they met up in Panama. A copy of his american passport tells Elena, Nathan Drake, 19th of July, 1982. He has no known relatives. The number of times he's gone through border control in the last fifteen years are limited to only a bare few, but he is the owner of a flat in Key West, flanking the bustling Duval that she knows from her childhood.

 

A joint memory; something that could, perhaps take the edge off of the line of his shoulders. Make him into something that has more layers than the dangerous sharpness of a knife, the trigger of a gun, to her.

 

She thinks this when she wakes to Nate quietly twisting in the threadbare sheets of the Mondrian's best bedspreads. Elena's not convinced he has the economy to keep this up, but she's also made the conscious choice to go along with it. The reckless lip to his smile when he checks them in on 750 square feet splaying out across the 25th floor, and the scrape of his voice when he mutters her name in between blasphemies and curses, might have something to do with it.

 

Elena's dated cookie cutter boys with a degree in humanism, and achievement hunters straight out of Ivy League schools. Idealists with bright smiles and manners. Nathan Drake is a prison skipper and a thief. He's killed with his hands and by the extension of a gun, a knife. He speaks Indonesian Malay with a brutish accent, and loots UNESCO heritage sites for infamy and riches. (She thinks it's more the infamy, than it is the money, as a side note. It is, she will learn, later.)

 

Ultimately, it comes down to this -- Nate is her choice to make. And she does.

 

"So," she asks one evening, one foot curling around his naked calf, her back pressed against the cushioned headboard, "Where are you going next? Can't imagine you cooped up in a fancy place like this for much longer."

 

Nate, on his stomach, face half pressed into a pillow, makes a weakly offended noise. "What's wrong with this?"

 

"Nothing. _You're_ just wrong, like this," Elena replies, half smiling at his raised eyebrow slowly declining down his face. "Tell me that's not somewhat true, Mr. My job description entails not showering for three weeks at a time."

 

"Well -- I do like it a little dirty." The grin in his voice takes over his entire face when he flips onto his back, smoothing out pearlescent lines of scarring on his cheeks; premature crow's feet crowding the corners of his eyes. She rolls her eyes, "Funny."

 

"Thank you; I'll be here all night."

 

Elena hums, sees an unmarred face in his boyish charm, and thinks that she might let her heart break over that cocky slip of teeth, even when it's in a situation where it's in barely concealed anger, or in pain, at the point of a rifle.

 

* * *

 

She always remembers bits and pieces of her nightmares. Trapped in a submarine, submerged in murky water, the Descendants with their frothing mouths and twisted limbs snarling around every corner. And when Nate has woken her up three nights in a row to the cityscape of New York murmuring soothing as their backdrop, she knows that she has to take a break.

 

Nate takes one, two, measured breaths alongside her, and looks uncertain about what to do with himself for the split of a second. "Florida, huh?" he says.

 

"No place like home."

 

Elena smooths hair out of her eyes, tangling in her wet eyelashes. She should feel so much more about the fact that she's baring her vulnerability to the bone in front of him. Every microcell in her body tells her this. That flaking her fears out to him is _dangerous_. Pack your emotional and physical baggage and go.

 

"I've a place -- if you ever feel like it, that is."

 

It's casual, for any type of guy Elena's ever met. It means nothing, in the span of things.

 

Any type of guy except for the man that Nathan Drake has proved to be -- whose tan has lessened into something pale and wavering at the prospect of sharing a home address that she's already seen, stamped on a spreadsheet, along with the rest of his somewhat public persona. She's never told him this, though, and at this -- well, she doesn't plan to. She feels like breathing out in this very moment will make something shatter like glass and scatter like thick fog. Break this coop of a thing that they currently have.

 

"Another expensive hotel suite?" She teases, gently, finally, after prolonged silence.

 

The carve of Nate's shoulder against the slant of light in the background immediately drops a notch, tension slipping when he realizes that she got him out of his potentially very personal cul-de-sac without prying it open wider.

 

"Might as well be," he chuckles, "Nothing this fancy, but at least we won't have to call beforehand and make reservations."

 

"Sounds good to me," she says, and lets the issue slide, eventually getting beneath the covers again. She falls asleep to Nate's breathing slowly evening out.

 

* * *

 

When he throws her a set of glimmering new keys, connecting to a Chrysler convertible, Elena only eyes them -- and him, with mistrust. "This is not a plane ticket," she intones.

 

"No, it's not," Nate agrees. "I thought it might be more fun, this way."

 

"What, roadtripping, or knowing we're roadtripping in a stolen car?"

 

Nate, who's sunk low into the passenger's seat, smiles recklessly, and Elena remembers why she thinks he is the edge of a knife she'll eventually fall onto and impale her wrist on -- blue, vital capillaries and all. "The plates have been switched a number of times, so technically, I didn't steal this -- " he rifles through a thin stack of papers, skimming the pages, "Denver registered 200 Convertible from 07'."

 

Elena squeezes the keys in her palm, thinks. And Nate looks at her with something torn in his eyes that is both promise and beckon. A leap of faith. And she would lie if there isn't something in the pit of her stomach turning to liquid heat at the thought of living a little on this side of things.

 

The seats are barely worn, buttery soft leather easing beneath her weight. The thrum of the engine is a low rumble, and Nate's eyes are impossibly bright on her every move until they are safely out of New Jersey, a line of quicksilver in the midday down the I-95 S, weighed down by traffic but not slow.

 

She drives all day, relishing in how little insulation there is between them and the road; how the sound of the car is the only dominating noise in the coupe. She is freer in any speeding vehicle than in many other ways. Nate is uncharacteristically quiet, but when she occasionally glances over at him, his posture is loose limbed, and the corners of his mouth are upturned.

 

"What're you all smiles about?" Elena says, quirking an eyebrow, even as she's turned back at the road, endlessly a swipe of quick grey before and beneath them.

 

"Nothin', just that you drive like _you_ stole the car, not me."

 

"Oh," Elena replies, " _Now_ you're the one who stole the car?"

 

Nate laughs. It slip slides warmly down her spine.

 

* * *

  

Key West at dawn is exactly as she remembers it. A little smaller. Houses, cooped up pale green and dusty pink and faded yellows; cotton candy facades lining Duval Street down toward the docks and the water. Nate tells her to park up street, and that they're really going the other way, but that coming out around the corner from the cemetery, and continuing down and turning left down onto Duval in the yawn of the orange sun is quite somethin'.

 

And it is. Grape red and orange and a wide tongue of gold, mirroring in the water, rippling in a warm breeze. It's reminiscent of being _home_ , and it beautifully aches down through her stomach.

 

"Somehow, I always end up back here," Nate says, walking slightly behind her, trailing.

 

"I can imagine," she breathes, and walks slowly now, tracing how the pastel colored clouds flit between windows, weaving shadows in the bends of the house facades.

 

"C'mon," Nate says, and beckons, in left. They twist onto Caroline St, sleeping, shaded, and then turn back up, up onto Whitehead, passing wired trunks of trees Elena is sure she remembers, green leafed and a little less twisted, from twenty years back. Bars she is sure she's visited; street corners on which she's stood in the warm evening, awash with twilight, and hailed cabs when they've been a gang skipping through every southern Florida town.

 

They eventually stop, rounding a nest of palms. Nate lives in a small one bedroom condo on Petronia Street. A pale pink building, low and barely touched by the way the sun stands in the sky at morning.

 

He rustles with the keys for a few breaths, and Elena feels like someone's girl, in the width of that moment. Bag slung across her shoulder, touching her hip; waiting on one restless foot in Nate's shadow. What is she doing there?

 

She is the prize. Possessions gained in the post wake of a job all done. Nate's been throwing money around him, snaking an arm around Elena's waist and pulling her close and into something hazy and not quite factual, that is encapsulated within the real world. Nothing of the sort ever lasts; the Spanish gold is all but gone. The rustle of keys in the lock, twisting an old lock mechanism needing oil and care is there, and Elena whips around, bag trailing, listening to something slide back into the ground reality of it all.

 

Nate looks at her, something skittering across his face. Bright eyes, cut cheeks, the bow of his lips.

 

"This yours?" she asks, weakly making something out of it that she's not quite sure she means as a joke. Nate shrugs a little, and pushes the door inwards. "As much of a home as I've got," he replies. A confession; she's not sure what it is. But the sheen of uncertainty in his eyes makes it an answer layered with something that's flashed to her occasionally. A well kept secret.

 

Nathan Drake is a liar and a thief, who makes blazing fires out of sparks, and scales shivering thousand year old-temples in the depths of the amazonian jungles.

 

"I can -- " But then he trails off, because what? And he seems to sense it. Elena hesitates. Nathan Drake is holding a gun to her foot and resting the pad of her finger to its oily trigger. Literally, at times.

 

Elena smiles. "It looks nice," she says.

 

Because for one, she always had the choice, and Nate's currently bending half a rib open to invite her in, morbid as it sounds, to showcase something that makes shadows chase one another in his expression. Like he's flipping the proverbial weapon, pressing his hand over hers, sharing the risks.

 

Elena has known Nate for three weeks; he is the sharp blade of a knife, but he is also a tired smile and bruised eyes, licking her mouth open like it might be the last thing he ever does. (At times, it's close enough to being reality.) He is a choice that Elena gets to make, so she steps through the door.

 

* * *

 


End file.
